The concept of a “skate blog” is close to non-existent in 2016. Solointerviewed Dan Watson, the mind behind YouWillSoon, a notorious skate industry gossip repository that made him a certain canteen manager’s arch nemesis from roughly 2004-2008. “But I think what most people really ignored about the blog is that I think skateboarding is fucking awesome. I think skateboarding is so good. I feel like people think that skateboarding in the Olympics or Street League or something can somehow ruin skateboarding or that it’ll somehow dilute the coolness of skateboarding down to the point where it’s not going to be cool anymore. But that’s not going to happen.”

On this last Monday Links post of the year, I’d just like to say thank you everyone for being along for the ride in 2016 and for all of your support. Besides a bit of an update slump at the start of summer, this has probably been the best year ever on this website for content, creativity and productivity (ok, fine, we blew it on the Christmas clip.) Hope to keep it going for many chill years to come.

After Rodney Torres 5050ed through in like a 2001 issue of Thrasher, you kinda had to figure there wasn’t much else to for full-grown adults do on the back end of the ‘E’ of the love sign on 55th and Sixth Avenue. Then Josh 5-0ed it in Lurkers 3 last year, and you really had to think there’s no other way an adult could contort his body to fit through something no larger than your average car trunk.

Somehow, someway, the tallest adult to ever skate the spot — the ~5′ 11-ish Connor Champion — managed to condense himself into a human S and charge a nosegrind through the keyhole of the E. Unless there’s an Instagram video of Rob Welsh doing a noseslide or Daniel Kim drops a new part he never told anyone about these next five days, you already know what #1 of next week’s Quartersnacks Top 10 is going to be ;)

The claustrophobic nosegrind and a bunch of Wade D. footage could be found in Grand Collection‘s new one.

We waited nearly two decades to find out who paged Kareem Campbell (“it was just a homie“) in what was apparently the only *two* pager checks in skateboard video history. However, videos were sparse then. There was a finite amount of skateboard material released in a given month that obsessing over minutiae like who was paging Kareem seemed like an adequate use of brainpower.

Who are we kidding man. Nothing changed. We’re still over here thinking about the saammee duummbb shhiitt — the only difference now is that you can text Connor Champion to find out he was playing to the Future and Young Thug song off Esco Terrestrial rather than waiting twenty years for an Australian skateboard website to ask him about what was coming from the speaker he was holding mid nollie nose manual nollie flip.

Maybe I’ve been spending too much time around the the Vert God, but it’s becoming tough to deny the switch hardflip’s increased value among the social media skateboard landscape. We’re entering a post-Ryan Gallant/post-Matt Miller world, meaning people are no longer ashamed to whip out their non-flipping hardflips in public. Imperfect hardflips of the less-than-Gallant variety have entered the playful realm of “dad tricks.” There’s charm to their imperfection.

And what better lo-def, rickety flatground switch hardflip to go down in the un-storied history of the trick, than in fashion time traveler Wade Desarmo’s first-ever part, which was released the same year as ATCQ‘s last album. It’s almost unfair dude ended up being the only Canadian to crack the 2012 #phatstylez master list — seeing as how he had a H.G Wells G-Wagon to predict the 6XL Umbro jersey + bucket hat look fifteen years before it would adorn undersized caucasians who skateboard in the New York metropolitan area.

The two guys who skated from Boston to New York skated from New York to Philly this past summer. The Backstreet Atlas Guide to New Jersey premieres on Thursday, January 29 at 7 P.M. Kinfolk Studios, 94 Wythe Ave in Brooklyn. Flyer here.

“This guy snorted a line of cocaine and then crooked grinded a 12 stair rail — This will blow your mind.” Every now and then, Slap comes through with unparalleled levels of brilliance: 2016 Ride Channel Title Predictions.